“I’m not upset, Janine.” I ran my hands down my red tie, straightening it. “You’re my secretary. If you need me, that’s fine.”
“Oh, good. Then you probably—”
I held up my hand, silencing her. “But, let me walk into my office first, all right? I don’t need a shadow.”
Her lips tightened as she nodded quickly. Janine was efficient and knew her way around real estate, but if I walked up behind her and yelled ‘boo,’ she’d probably hug the ceiling fan.
Strange girl.
My office boasted the same extravagance as my home, moderate but adequate. The lone brick building stood unassuming and dull. Each agent had a tiny cubicle, and I insisted technology be kept at a bare minimum. The less opportunity for the Feds to bug our office or hack into our computers, the better. Not that I’d ever left a trail the DEA could find. Mateo outfitted the entire office with wiretap detectors, data scramblers and closed-circuit television.
Once seated, I folded my hands in front of me and leaned forward. I learned the power play move from watching my father during meetings. “So, what’s so urgent?”
She rubbed her palms over her mouth. It was a move I’d come to know as her telltale sign of anxiety. “Well, sir, Rob called in sick early this morning, so I assumed there was no way you’d want to miss a chance at the Toller property.”
Rob Young needed to be knocked down a few notches. He had an overextended sense of self-worth I found irritating. However, he’d proven to be my best flipper, so I’d let his attitude slide. All my house flippers were men. I’d never send a woman to a job site. It wasn’t sexist; it was good business.
I was still alive, because I took nothing for granted. No situation was safe.
I didn’t like where this was going. “I don’t care about Rob. What happened?”
Janine wrung her hands while shuffling the papers in her hand. “When I got to the site, the house was a total wreck, as we expected. No one was there yet, so I thought I’d walk around the perimeter and check out the foundation.”
A coldness filled the space where my soul used to be. I had no feelings one way or the other for Janine, but I’d hate to see ambition end her life. Only an American civilian would do something as stupid as wander a foreclosure in the second ward, alone and unarmed.
The lengthy conversation began to lose my focus, and I clenched my fingers around the edge of my desk. “For fuck’s sake, what happened, Janine?”
Bristling from my comment, she hugged her chest, as her chin trembled. “As I rounded the back of the house, a man came up behind me. He scared me at first, because I thought no one else was around.” She paused, dabbing at her eyes.
Tears. Wonderful.
I raised an eyebrow and waited, my stare fixated on her.
“Yes, well,” she continued, sniffling, “he grabbed my shoulder and asked me what I was doing. I know I shouldn’t have responded, but I was so scared, Mr. Carrera.”
“What did you say?”
She finally looked me in the eye. “I told him I was looking at the property to buy for my boss. He asked who you were, so I told him.”
Blood pulsed against my temple. “You told him my name?”
She winced. “I said I represented RVC Enterprises.”
At least she didn’t use my name. That may’ve saved her life.
“Go on,” I encouraged, my knuckles turning white.
She sniffled again. “He dug his fingers into my shoulder and told me the place was already under contract. I told him I’d just looked at the MLS listings and there’d been no update. That’s when he got in my face and yelled at me.”
Getting information out of this woman frayed all my thinned nerves.
“Words, Janine,” I bit out between clenched teeth. “What did he say?”
She nodded her head. “He said he didn’t give an f-word about my listing, and to back off and tell El Muerte, it’s not over.” She slouched forward, her earlier poise vanishing. Worried lines coated her eyes. “Who’s El Muerte, Mr. Carrera? And what’s not over?”
“Shit!” It pissed me off how quickly things derailed when my mind was consumed with flame-haired bartenders. I’d allowed the worst breach of my cleanest sanctum, and I had only myself to blame.
And maybe Janine for being stupid.
I stood and stormed to my office door. Throwing it open, I motioned to the cubicles lined outside of it. “Go, Janine. I need to think.”
She paused, halfway out of the chair, her doe eyes rounded. “Who’s El Muerte?”
I hardened a steeled look, my eyes informing her that we were done. Nodding her head, she hugged the papers to her chest. Her face held a mix of concern and fear as she exited my office.
Locking the door behind her, I tugged at my meticulously combed back hair until it hung disheveled in my face. I needed to be careful. Every decision I made from here on out affected everyone I met.
Janine wasn’t in danger. Janine was a message. Muñoz enforcers were following an order.
Punching the wall, I rested my forehead against the molding. “I’m El Muerte,” I whispered to an empty room. “The Reaper.”
As the office cleared out for the day, I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the gun from the hidden back compartment. Holding it up to my face, I marveled at the intricacies, definition, and power behind it. One small squeeze of a man’s finger could extinguish another man’s life. It was simple to think about, but devastating on the psyche of a young man eager to find his place in a world he wasn’t wanted.
The room smelled of metallic rust. I may’ve only been sixteen; however, I knew blood when I smelled it. It singed my nose and gagged my throat, but I’d never show it. I steeled my expression, showing nothing on the outside, just as I’d been taught. One solitary overhead light swung, and my eyes followed it back and forth. Somehow it gave the room more of a death shadow than what already hung over it. One chair rested in the middle of the dusty floor, and the rest of the room stood bare. I assumed the reasoning was for easier clean up, but what did I know? This was the first time I’d been brought inside. Every other time, I’d stood guard outside the door, hardening my soul to the screams for mercy. Eventually, the begging stopped tearing at my insides.
Eventually, I’d become him.
A man, not more than twenty, sat bound in the chair with his face beaten and his eyes swollen shut. My two friends had worked him over good. I didn’t ask what he’d done. Sometimes no one knew. Sometimes the one in the chair didn’t even know. Strangely, no one questioned it. That’s how you knew power ran deep. When you sat tied to a chair, bleeding and waiting for the hammer to fall on your execution, and you didn’t ask why. You’d crossed the wrong people.
I smelled him before I heard him. My father had a distinct permanent scent of gunpowder and charred wood that roiled my stomach every time he drew near. Standing in that small room, I stood straighter. I squared my shoulders. I showed no fear.
“Take it, son,” he commanded, handing me a black .22 caliber handgun. Curling my fingers around the trigger, I stared at it as a frenzied war raged quietly inside of me. I knew what he wanted. He’d been warning me that I’d be expected to prove my loyalty to the cartel.